Small Isles - Life at One

Production and animation by Riley Thompson Story by Jim Fairchild and Riley Thompson The new instrumental project of guitarist Jim Fairchild (Grandaddy / Modest Mouse / All Smiles) and songwriter/composer Jacob Snider (named Best New Artist by NPR-affiliate WXPN-Philadelphia), Small Isles inhabits a rare hypnotic twilight between motion picture music and incandescent cosmic folk. At once a love letter to film soundtracks and a meditative balm for our troubled times, ‘The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea’ was recorded by Fairchild on a bare-bones mobile rig while on tour with Modest Mouse, in the cracks of time between soundchecks and performances, from city to city, in darkened hotel rooms and over-lit backstage dressing rooms, giving the album a sense of intimacy, of stolen time and weary after show solitude. Playfully conceived as an imaginary score to an imaginary film in the spirit of the 90s sleeper classic ‘The Ice Storm’, the album is cinematic in a homespun way, at times recalling the